MSNBC Insinuates Traders Can Be Worse Than Psychopaths

Disturbing new research about financial traders and their personalities may shed some light on the behavior of Kweku Adoboli, the so-called ârogueâ UBS trader who allegedly lost the bank $2.3 billion through unauthorized trading.

A new study from a Swiss university finds that financial traders are more uncooperative than psychopaths and that they have a greater tendency for lying and risk-taking.

As part of their executive MBA thesis at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, forensic psychiatrist Thomas Noll, a chief administrator at the PÃ¶schwies prison near Zurich, and co-author Pascal Scherrer studied the behavior of 28 financial traders in a decision-making game, comparing their performances with those of people who were diagnosed as psychopaths.

They expected to find that, like the psychopaths, the traders would be uncooperative with others, but that theyâd perform better at the game because, as Noll said, traders âare supposed to be good at making money. In social interactions, theyâre supposed to be good at performing.â

But the two authors were shocked to discover that the traders were actually more uncooperative and egocentric than psychopaths when playing a prisonerâs dilemma game -- a type of gaming scenario where participants can choose to cooperate or betray each other.

Moreover, even though the traders lied and took risks more than their psychopathic counterparts, their performance at the game was about the same as the control group. This means the traders not only didnât play well with others, they also didnât do any better at the game than regular Joes.

Disturbing new research about financial traders and their personalities may shed some light on the behavior of Kweku Adoboli, the so-called ârogueâ UBS trader who allegedly lost the bank $2.3 billion through unauthorized trading.

A new study from a Swiss university finds that financial traders are more uncooperative than psychopaths and that they have a greater tendency for lying and risk-taking.

As part of their executive MBA thesis at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, forensic psychiatrist Thomas Noll, a chief administrator at the PÃ¶schwies prison near Zurich, and co-author Pascal Scherrer studied the behavior of 28 financial traders in a decision-making game, comparing their performances with those of people who were diagnosed as psychopaths.

They expected to find that, like the psychopaths, the traders would be uncooperative with others, but that theyâd perform better at the game because, as Noll said, traders âare supposed to be good at making money. In social interactions, theyâre supposed to be good at performing.â

But the two authors were shocked to discover that the traders were actually more uncooperative and egocentric than psychopaths when playing a prisonerâs dilemma game -- a type of gaming scenario where participants can choose to cooperate or betray each other.

Moreover, even though the traders lied and took risks more than their psychopathic counterparts, their performance at the game was about the same as the control group. This means the traders not only didnât play well with others, they also didnât do any better at the game than regular Joes.

Well "some" would be assumed. You can use the word "some" with anything. There would be no point to doing or publishing a study where one concludes that "some" people are capable of doing this or that. I believe that would fall under stating the obvious.